Ben Shapiro, the Orthodox Jewish talkshow host, surprised many in the Orthodox Jewish community on Wednesday, when he told his listeners that singer Eitan Katz was his classmate in highschool. He went on to play Eitan’s hit “Le’mancha” for his audience, and revealed that he actually played a few violin lines on his first album.

Ben Shapiro (born January 15, 1984) is an American conservative political commentator, writer, and lawyer. He is the host of a podcast, The Ben Shapiro Show, that is downloaded 15 million times per month and is widely regarded as a top program for young conservative listeners. The show made it to radio airwaves when it was picked up by national syndicate Westwood One in April, the same company that syndicates popular shows such as The Savage Nation and The Mark Levin Show.

He is also the editor-in-chief of Daily Wire, a news website, and of late has taken on a greater role as an outspoken public intellectual alongside fellow “intellectual dark web” stars Jordan Peterson, Bret Weinstein, Jonathan Haidt, and Dave Rubin.

He is also the author of seven books, the first being 2004’s Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America’s Youth; Shapiro began writing this book at age 17. Also at age 17, Shapiro became the youngest nationally syndicated columnist in the United States. He was editor-at-large of Breitbart News between 2012 and 2016.

Shapiro was born in Los Angeles, California. His family is Jewish, having emigrated from Russia and Lithuania. Shapiro developed talents in both violin and piano at a young age, notably having performed at the Israeli Bonds Banquet in 1996 at twelve years of age. Shapiro’s parents both worked in Hollywood. His mother worked as an executive of a TV company and his father as a composer.

Skipping two grades (third and ninth), Shapiro went from Walter Reed Middle School to Yeshiva University High School of Los Angeles where he graduated in 2000 at age 16. He graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2004, at age 20, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science and then cum laude from Harvard Law School in 2007. He then practiced law at Goodwin Procter. As of March 2012 he ran an independent legal consultancy firm, Benjamin Shapiro Legal Consulting, in Los Angeles.

He founded The Daily Wire on September 21, 2015.

The Ben Shapiro Show airs every weekday. Westwood One began syndicating The Ben Shapiro Show to radio in 2018. In 2018, Politico described the podcast as “massively popular”.

In the leadup to the 2018 midterm elections, Shapiro hosted a featured show on Fox News, called “The Ben Shapiro Election Special”, for 4 consecutive weeks. The special’s final episode finished #1 in Sunday night cable news, defeating CNN, MSNBC, and HLN combined.

FUN FACT: the violinist on the early album “Biglal Avos” was none other than a young and talented @benshapiro pic.twitter.com/Vx9eT73x5j

— Eitan Katz (@Eitankatzmusic) May 1, 2018

 

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Thanks to my old friend @officialbenshapiro for sharing L’maancha with your audience today!

A post shared by Eitan Katz (@eitankatz) on Oct 31, 2018 at 6:38pm PDT

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